


Star Creek

by smoakoverwatch



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, coffee shop au ish, fluff and the lightest angst, inspired by schitt's creek, no appearances of ollie queen just a pretentiousish oliver, small town AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 07:25:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15456270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smoakoverwatch/pseuds/smoakoverwatch
Summary: When the Queen family loses their fortune, they’re forced to relocate to small town Star Creek. Dad’s in denial, Mom’s trying to win over the townspeople, Thea misses the high life and Oliver? Oliver’s just trying to get to know his intriguing new boss, Felicity Smoak.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So here I am with a little mini project of mine, inspired the sitcom Schitt’s Creek. If you’re familiar with that show, you’ll see some similarities only in the beginning before I moved into something of my own. 
> 
> It ended up being both shorter and longer than what I had planned, but I had a lot of fun writing it, so I hope you enjoy!
> 
> ((This is the first of two parts, the second part is in Felicity’s POV and is posted at the same time))

Oliver Queen stands in his room, stripped of its furnishings.

He wasn’t sad to see the bed go, or the dresser, or the desk. But when they attack his shelves, the real pain hits. He can only watch helplessly as his collection of first edition classic novels are carried out.

Let the record show that ‘helpless’ is not a word Oliver Queen uses to describe himself often.

He trails behind the individuals who honestly look bored tearing his life apart piece by piece, feeling like a child with how his arms hang from the side and fighting a whine.

Eventually, he ends up by the front door, where the rest of his family is watching their lives being carelessly uprooted.

His sister, Thea, crosses her arms as she keeps a careful eye on their house.

“Oh no, don’t –” she groans as someone carries out a large frame, “That was one of my favourite paintings. I begged Dad for an hour to bid on it at that auction.”

Oliver puts an arm around his sister’s shoulder in a gesture meant to comfort, even though he’s feeling discomforted himself.

“It’s okay, Speedy,” he tries to say soothingly, “It’s okay.”

“This sucks,” she mumbles.

Oliver silently agrees.

Behind them, their mother, Moira Queen, has her lips pressed in a thin line.

“Robert, this is ridiculous,” she tells her husband, “Tell them this is a misunderstanding.”

Robert Queen only frowns, looking for the right thing to say, and Oliver tries not to laugh bitterly.

There’s no misunderstanding here – his Dad hired a bad business manager who went and threw all their assets into the ground. The idiot accountant is nowhere to be found, now. Oliver imagines he’s on a beach in the Caymans somewhere, enjoying a drink with a little umbrella and laughing at how he’s royally screwed the Queen family over (pun intended).

The company’s been taken over by Stellmoor International, leaving the working members of the Queen family (so, all of them but Thea), and a decent chunk of their employees jobless.

When they’re left with almost nothing – not even a decent couch for all of them to sit on – a man in a cheap suit and a thick file of documents explains their situation to them. Oliver doesn’t pay attention. He doesn’t need polyester tie over here to tell him what he already knows – things suck right now, and there’s no way of fixing it.

Instead, he paces around the empty hallways of the house. Somehow, without all the things that made it feel like home, it seems bigger. Bigger, but hollow. It’s so strange to see that Oliver struggles to remember that this was the same home he ran around in as a kid, where he snuck girls in as a teenager, where he stole drinks out of dad’s liquor cabinet with his best friend, Tommy.

“… But there is one asset the government has allowed you to keep,” he says, and suddenly Oliver’s attention zeroes in again.

He blinks, spirits flying for a moment.

“The house?” Moira asks hopefully.

“Not quite,” Cheap Suit says, “Robert, in 2001 you purchased a small town not far from here by the name of Star Creek.”

Oliver looks to his dad with wide eyes.

“You _bought_ a town?” he asks incredulously. He honestly didn’t know towns could be bought. Weren’t they, like, property of the government?

Thea laughs and throws herself back on the couch, where she was before sitting upright. She mumbles something to the effect of asking whether they deserved to lose their money after all. Oliver’s not sure if he agrees, but he’s leaning to it right now.

“I… did,” Robert confirms with a frown, “At the time it seemed like there was an investment opportunity for land development. It fell through, and honestly, I had forgotten about it until now.”

Cheap Suit starts to give Robert a look that tells Oliver he probably agrees with Thea, too.

“Nevertheless,” he says with a shred of patience, “It’s yours. You can stay there until you get back on your feet.”

Or sell it, Oliver thinks.

He explains more to Robert, but Oliver’s had enough. He walks towards the bay window of their great hall, enjoying the view of their grounds for one last time.

He hopes to god that Star Creek is at least a decent place to look at.

* * *

Star Creek is not a decent place to look at.

Oliver figures this out the moment they cross the sign welcoming them into town, with it’s peeling paint indicating a population size smaller than some parties he’s attended.

Next to him, Thea sighs in exasperation.

“I think I saw a cow on the way here,” she comments, “Like, an actual, real life cow.”

Oliver looks around the town warily. He can’t do farmland.

Luckily it seems like Thea might have been exaggerating – or the pain of losing everything has made her start to hallucinate. Oliver only mildly hopes for the former.

In reality, the town is probably what Oliver would imagine any small town to look like. There’s no buildings taller than three storeys in sight, no one here looks like they’ve stepped foot in anything fancier than a Macy’s before, and – ew, a mosquito the size of his thumb just flew past his face.

This place sucks.

It’s a thought Oliver repeats over and over again in his mind, even if it is childish of him. He says it in the car and as they look around the town and when they eventually end up at a motel – charmingly just called ‘Motel’, where his dad explains that the owner has graciously allowed them to stay free of charge.

Owning a useless town has got to have some perks, Oliver supposes.

Still, he’s not thrilled about sharing a room with his sister – which is not something he’s ever had to do. In the Queen Mansion they actually had their own wings, so he would sometime go days without having to deal with Thea. Even on family vacations, they had separate hotel rooms big enough to forget anyone was next door.

All of that’s going to change now, he thinks with a sigh as he drops his suitcase – singular! – to the floor.

The suitcase contains everything he could keep. It’s not much. Some suits from his time at QC – not that he’ll be needing those anymore –, some more casual clothes, some toiletries.

Not for the first time since arriving at Star Creek, Oliver checks his phone to be met with a screen free of any notifications. He fights the urge to sigh in frustration – Thea’s unpacking on the other side of the room and he does not want to bring her attention to this.

The truth is he’s a little more than disappointed – it’s been _days_ since the news about his family broke, and he’s not heard a word from anyone back in Starling City.

Most of his friends, he doesn’t care to hear from again. They weren’t really close. But it hurts in a strange way he doesn’t know how to name that his best friend; his _oldest_ friend, Tommy Merlyn has yet to say anything.

He stares at the lock screen. It’s a picture of his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Laurel Lance. The picture is a few years old, and even through they’d been _off_ for the past month Oliver had never really gotten around to changing it. A part of him is surprised that she hasn’t reached out either. Even if they weren’t together at the moment, she still would have called.

Oliver is quickly starting to realize what money, or the absence of, changes in people.

Next door, he can hear his parents arguing.

That’s another thing about this motel. The walls are paper-thin, every time his mother so much as yawns, Oliver can hear it. This lovely little feature makes concentrating on _calming down_ a little difficult, because he can sense when his parents are getting to _at-each-other’s-throat’s_ territory.

He looks over to the bed next to him. Thea’s got her headphones in her ears and her eyes closed. A tornado could pass by this room and she’d probably sleep through it.

He sighs and pulls the door open. Maybe a walk around his new town might do him some good. 

* * *

At first, Oliver worries he might get lost, wandering on his own in a new place, but he quickly learns that Star Creek only has a few major roads. When he opened Google Maps on his phone, he found that not even Google really had an idea as to what was going on here.

Ugh. This place is worse than he thought.

There’s a handful of people on the streets, and considering it’s Wednesday afternoon Oliver suspects – hopes – that maybe the general population is just at work. In Starling City, even a weekday afternoon like this one would mean traffic, both foot and on the road, crowds, and bustling activity.

It’s so quiet here. Some would think the silence is peaceful, but not Oliver.

Frankly, the quietness gets a little unsettling after awhile. It feels like at any moment, the music will swell, and someone will throw a cloth bag over his head and axe-murder him in a barn somewhere.

Eventually, he lands on a street that seems to be the most commercial. He passes a library, a diner, a few small stores and observes them carefully. All of the businesses here seem to be small, family owned joints. He wonders what these kinds of people would think of Queen Consolidated. They were, technically, a family owned company. Just… bigger.

Oliver follows the stretch of sidewalk, one foot carrying him past the other until he lands on the most brightly painted sign on the street.

In bright blue, with purple accents around some of the block lettering, greets the way to _Smoaker’s Corner._ The large windows reveal a strange set up – somewhere between a store, with racks and shelves of merchandise, and a coffee shop, with tables and chairs.

There’s a few people inside, enjoying what he assumes to be coffee in oversized, polka dot mugs.

Strange _,_ Oliver thinks.

Just as he’s about to turn around and walk down towards the motel, a sign on the window catches his eye.

_Help Wanted._

Oliver’s never applied for a job before. His work leading the Queen Consolidated marketing department was handed to him, by virtue of having his name on the side of the building, immediately after he finished college. His father had practically ingrained in him that was the role he was going into from the time he started high school, and Oliver never bothered to question it. He never once thought about how it would affect his future.

It occurs to him that, given the family’s newest circumstances, he’s going to need to find work eventually. They all will.

He knows Robert Queen would never approve of him working in retail or food service, let alone _both._ He’d be downright mortified.

That thought makes him push the door open.

The few heads sitting by the tables turn as he enters, and Oliver realizes belatedly there’s a bell attached to the door. He didn’t even know stores did that outside of TV. Eyes look at him curiously – as if they vaguely recognized him but weren’t sure where to place it.

Good. He’d prefer it that way.

Once he’s inside and has a better view of the shop, Oliver’s more confused about this hybrid operation than before.

Half of the area is, as he suspected, like a store. It’s a small portion, granted, just a few shelves of electronic supplies. There’s a counter with a careful dual-screened computer set up next to all the merchandise, but no one is behind it.

On the other side is the coffee shop, and Oliver can see where the colour scheme for the sign outside came from. Small wood tables are scattered, some arm chairs line the windows with bright blue and purple throw pillows resting on them.

Every coffee mug he can see is some pop of colour, drawing his attention. Cheerful music plays at a considerate volume from the speakers. It’s like this place is demanding him to be pleasant and happy, despite his own sullen mood.

He approaches the counter slowly, though there’s no one behind it. He wonders briefly why this kind of place doesn’t have a bell sitting here, it would certainly fit the whole little theme the owner has going on, when suddenly, someone pops up from beneath the counter.

“Hi!” she chirps.

Her smile is as bright as the décor of this shop. Blue eyes shine behind a pair of framed glasses, and a blonde ponytail swishes behind her.

“Sorry,” she continues before he can say anything, “Were you waiting long? I was just checking our coffee beans stock, and then the cabinet door got stuck. That thing’s been sticky for years, I’ve been meaning to get it fixed but I never had the chance.”

She shakes her head absently.

“Anyway, can I get you anything?”

The first thing Oliver notices is she talks _so fast_. He can barely keep up. The second thing he notices is her smile. It’s not really a bland customer service smile, nor is it the courteous _that’s Oliver Queen, be nice to him_ smile he got back home.

It’s nice. Just, nice.

“I uh…” Oliver points over his shoulder in a jerky movement, suddenly feeling unsure of himself, “Saw the sign. Outside. Can I speak to your manager?”

The girl – Oliver assumes she’s just a girl, she looks so young – gives him another smile.

“You’re looking at her,” she says proudly, “Hi, Felicity Smoak.”

Oliver tries not to raise his eyebrows.

She’s not exactly what he expected for the manager – he honestly assumed she was some student working part time, or something – but looking at her sunny appearance that matches the shop, it starts to make sense. And he suspects her surname matches the strange spelling of the store.

“Do you have a resume?” she asks.

“I…” Oliver frowns, feeling stupid. He’s never needed one before, “Not yet, sorry. I was just passing by, I wasn’t planning on applying.”

The manager smiles.

“That’s fine,” she says, “I’ll get you an application, and you can come back with a resume and we can talk.”

Great. He’s going to need Thea’s help for this one.

As he exits the shop, Felicity Smoak gives him one last smile, and he tries not to trip on his feet.

* * *

As it turns out, _Smoaker’s Corner_ is a unique blend of an internet café – the only internet café in town (it surprises Oliver more that internet cafes are still a thing) – and a computer repair shop.

That’s what the concierge at the motel tells Oliver with a fond smile, and a passing comment that the owner is a _great gal._

He can’t disagree with that one.

Later, after he’s thrown together a resume and printed it out at the town library (this is his life now), he hands it to Felicity Smoak.

She skims over it, brightly painted finger nails turning the page over. He can tell by the way her eyebrows furrow at the name on top that she puts pieces together – that the same Oliver Queen of _that_ Queen Consolidated, whose demise has been all over the news, is now applying for a job at her coffee shop.

Sorry. Internet café and computer repair shop.

Dad would have chest pains looking at her business model.

Still, whatever she sees convinces her, and a week later Oliver is coming in for his first day.

“The truth is,” she reveals as he comes by, before opening at 7 am, for training, “I needed someone to handle the coffee shop side of things. I’m terrible at all of that. I was managing before but –”

She waves a hand absently. Oliver wonders why she would even open a café if she’s so bad at it. He keeps the question to himself.

“Not a problem,” Oliver says.

Despite the comfortable life he lived back in Starling City, Oliver knows his way around a kitchen, he knows baking and certainly good coffee. This won’t be so bad.

Felicity gives him a bright smile, bright pink lips stretching across her face.

“Excellent.”

The rest of the day is crash course training that he picks up fairly quickly – Oliver learns that Felicity prefers to throw him into things. And that she wasn’t kidding about being terrible with the café. She tried to make herself a drink and nearly broke the espresso machine, and Oliver finds himself gently nudging her back to the repairs table.

While she’s there, and Oliver doesn’t have any customers to deal with, he observes her.

As bad as Felicity is with food and drink, that girl knows her computers.

And other things – like phones, tablets, handheld videogame consoles, one memorable house call for a TV that left Oliver alone in the shop for thirty terrifying minutes.

Still, watching her with technology is strangely mesmerizing. When she’s working on something, it’s as if everything else melts away, and the only thing she can focus on is the tech. Her eyebrows scrunch up in concentration when she’s diagnosing a problem, her tongue pokes out of her lip when she’s taking hardware apart, her eyes light up when she finally gets something to work.

That’s not even including how great she is with any customer that comes in – everyone gets a bright smile, no matter how tired she may be, every person greets her with the enthusiasm of an old friend and walks away looking slightly dazed, as though the general brightness of Felicity Smoak is surreal.

Oliver finds himself blinking himself back into focus more than once, too, as he watched from the other end of the shop.

In the end, it takes about a month for them to establish a steady routine. He learns a lot at this job, sometimes he meets the other employees, who are really just high school kids trying to make a few bucks, but can’t work as many hours as he does.

He ends up shocking himself with how easily it comes to him – and Felicity, too.

He’ll never forget the surprised look on her face when he showed up at 7 am for opening, when his shift wasn’t until 1 pm that day.

“Oliver?” she asked questioningly, her hand still on the key pushed through the door.

“Hey,” he hesitated, “I know I’m early. I had this idea for new muffins to go with the change in season? And I wanted to test it out before we open.”

Felicity watched him for a moment, as though considering what could possibly possess a man to wake up early on his one late start – on a Saturday morning, no less – to willingly work extra hours. The grocery bags of new ingredients – for muffin testing purposes – rustle in his arms.

“That sounds awesome, Oliver,” she said, pushing the door open.

He had the muffins ready by late afternoon that day.

They sold out. 

He has to tell his family about the job eventually; that doesn’t go over too well. His father disapproves, but he can’t deny that Oliver’s the only person in the family who’s making an effort to get a move on their lives.

Since they’ve moved to Star Creek, Robert’s driven to Starling City about five times, with a promise of ‘figuring things out.’ Thea’s enrolled in high school, but Oliver suspects that she’s not as taken to it as she’d lead her parents to believe. Moira’s actually found herself a book club, of all things, and she spends dinner time relaying town gossip she picks up from there.

Oliver, in turn, has to deal with biting comments from his dad over dinner, jokes about fetching coffee from Thea, and a disapproving frown from his mother, but it’s worth it. Oliver likes the work: He gets to meet new people, gain some independence in his life, even if it does come a decade late, and he likes the people he works with.

The work also allows him to pick up habits of the people of Star Creek, which is why when he comes into the shop for his closing shift one day, he can’t help but look around in confusion.

He doesn’t know how to place it, but there’s something different with all the people of Star Creek today. There’s an excitement running through the air, people are happier today, holding the door open for him and wishing him a good afternoon.

He finds Felicity typing away at her computers near the repair station.

“Hey!” she says. Like just about everyone else here, she’s sporting a bright smile.

“Hey,” Oliver says as he approaches her station, “What is going on today? People are acting –”

“More cheery than usual?” Felicity says with a smile. By now she’s well aware of Oliver’s distaste for this town’s culture.

“Yeah.”

“Tonight’s the annual bonfire in Warner Park,” she says, “It’s a big deal, everyone in the town shows up.”

Oliver nods.

“Is that what’s got you smiling this afternoon?” he asks. There’s tease in his voice that she catches immediately. She tries to bite down her smile with little success.

“No,” she waves off, “Of course not. It’s totally for little kids and parents and just – ugh. But I will need you to lock up on your own today.”

Oliver laughs at her transparency.

“Sure,” he says.

“On second thought…” she tilts her head to the side, “You should come with me.”

As soon as she says it, Felicity looks like she regrets it. Her eyes widen slightly, and her mouth turns down.

“I mean –” she stumbles, “If you want. You’d probably think it’s _super_ lame. I just figured, we can close early tonight, since everyone will be there. And, you’re still kind of new in town and it’d be a cool way to meet people and maybe you’ll like it, but if you don’t want to, it’s totally –”

“Felicity?”

She stops, taking a moment to catch her breath.

“I’d love to go to the bonfire with you.”

Her lips – an eggplanty purple today, he notices for the first time – turn up in a relieved smile.

“Great.”

* * *

Felicity wasn’t kidding when she said the whole town shows up.

Oliver’s been through Warner Park lots of times – he passes by it on his morning jogs – and he’s never seen it this busy.

People are littered across the grass in spread out blankets. Some kids are running around, and it’s before sunset so the actual bonfire hasn’t started yet.

He learns a lot while he’s here.

For one thing, everyone knows Felicity. He had an idea while working at _Smoaker’s Corner_ , but here he’s quickly noticing that any conversation they try to start up is quickly interrupted by someone saying hi, checking in, or thanking her for some work she did.

He doesn’t mind.

The only time he does mind is when one guy, with a small _posse_ (not Oliver’s choice of word, but just something this little group looks like they’d describe themselves as) standing behind him walks over.

“Hi Felicity,” he says. He’s wearing a gray plaid shirt with a hole near the bottom. His messy brown hair falls over his eyebrow in a way that makes Oliver’s jaw twitch – he can _hear_ Moira Queen’s reprimands about sloppy appearances in his head.

Whoever this guy is, he makes Felicity shed her usual sunny disposition immediately.

“Hi,” she says. It’s a short, simple response, but for Felicity’s it’s downright cold.  

“It’s been a while since I saw you,” he comments.

“Been a busy summer,” she shrugs.

“How’s that store?”

“Fine.”

Wow. Oliver’s never seen Felicity this curt with _anyone,_ even with a few rude customers that have a habit of breaking their phones often (and then blaming Felicity’s repairs on it). He always assumed she had unending patience.

The other guy nods, as though sensing that this conversation will go nowhere.

“Well, it was nice to see you. We should catch up sometime,” he says.

“Sure,” Felicity says coolly, in a way that all people say when they have no intention of ever catching up with someone.

He gives an awkward little wave, and spares Oliver one glance before turning back to his waiting posse.

When he leaves, Felicity visibly relaxes against the blanket she’s set them up with.

Oliver sends her a questioning look, and she huffs.

“We dated,” she explains, and Oliver’s not sure why those words make him feel strange. He looks back at the guy, who’s still walking away, uncertainly now. He wonders what she saw in him.

“In high school,” she continues, “Which is, like, forever ago, but in a town this size no one forgets.”

She shakes her head.

“Anyway, Cooper’s always been a little annoyed that we broke up before graduation. And then I left Star Creek for college. When I came back he assumed we’d just pick back up again. All these years, you’d think he’d take a hint.”

It’s the first time she’s ever commented about a life outside Star Creek. Oliver’s been inside her office at the shop once or twice, where a framed MIT degree sits on the floor, as though she’s been meaning to hang it but hasn’t had a chance. He always wanted to ask her about it, but she never brought it up. Most days, she acts like she’s spent her whole life here in this small town.

Just as he’s about to push for more, two other people come by to greet Felicity, and she jumps off the blanket to give them hugs.

She introduces them to Oliver, but he forgets their names as soon as she does. They’re a married couple, definitely older than Felicity, but look at her with the kind of fondness one has for a younger sibling.

They chat for a bit, but Oliver has nothing to contribute when they delve into personal stories.

He looks around the park instead. The darker the sky falls, the more packed this place seems. He wonders if his family will show up. He texted Thea about it when he and Felicity had locked up the store, but she hadn’t responded.

It was frustrating, sometimes, the way his parents and sister sometimes refused to just _accept_ the town in the same way Oliver has.

Still, he’s glad to be here.

Felicity’s eyes light up when the bonfire is lit, she claps as people take advantage of the open mic, and by the end of the night, as she watches the fireworks with so much awe, Oliver can’t take his eyes off her.

He walks back to the motel sometime around midnight. He can’t stop smiling.

* * *

 

Months pass.

Oliver falls for Felicity Smoak and the town of Star Creek at the same time.

He has a sneaking suspicion that the former influenced the latter, though.

 

* * *

“What’s going on? You have frowny face.”

It’s the first thing Felicity says to him as she walks into the shop. He opened this morning, he wanted to check on their pastry stock before letting people in, but an email waiting for him when he woke up put a cloud over his day.

“Frowny face?” he echoes.

Felicity nods, taking the scarf off her neck and fixing her windswept hair. It’s closer to autumn now, Star Creek exploded with orange and red overnight. Oliver doesn’t know how the summer went by so fast.

“It’s when your eyebrows get all pointed down,” she gestures to her own forehead with two fingers, “And your mouth is like _grr._ It’s the same look you had when I told you those teenagers had shoplifted phone chargers after your shift ended last week.”

Despite his sullen mood, Oliver finds himself fighting a smile at her description.

“I didn’t realize I had such a predictable face,” he says.

“Just for me,” Felicity responds, but as soon as she said it, her cheeks go pink, “I mean, just because we work together. I start to notice things.”

She purses her lips together to stop herself from saying more, and Oliver nods.

“Anyway, want to tell me what’s got you down?”

Oliver chews the inside of his cheek. He’s not sure if he wants to admit it, it’s almost embarrassing, but he’s quickly discovered over the months that Felicity is so easy to talk to.

He holds up his phone.

“I got an invitation today,” he reveals, “For this engagement party back in Starling City.”

Felicity’s eyebrows furrow.

“Okay…”

“The party is for my best friend and my ex-girlfriend. And it’s the first time I’ve heard from them in months. I didn’t even know they were dating.”

There. He said it. He feels pathetic, but he said it.

“Oh,” Felicity winces, “Yikes. That definitely justifies the frowny face.”

“Yeah,” Oliver sighs.

“You’re not going, right?” Felicity asks.

Oliver shrugs.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly, “I don’t want to see all these people from my life in Starling, knowing they’ll be judging me for everything my family’s gone through. _More so_ since they know my history with Laurel and Tommy. But at the same time…”

“You want to go, just to prove to everyone that you’re doing just fine,” Felicity finishes.

He blinks.

“Yeah, exactly,” he says, “How did you know that?”

She lifts one shoulder in a humble shrug.

“Just a hunch.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” he continues, “I don’t have a car anymore, I’d have no way of getting to Starling City. It’s probably for the best.”

“I have a car,” Felicity says, “I wouldn’t mind –”

Oliver’s already shaking his head.

“Oh, no,” he says, “I couldn’t possibly, it’s too much –”

“It’s not that big a deal,” she says, “You can borrow the car, I trust you.”

Oliver tries not to let those three words get to him – really, he does – but a strange part of him feels a jolt of satisfaction.

“I appreciate it, Felicity, really,” he says, “But I don’t feel like going there all al…”

He pauses and looks at Felicity.

 _Don’t think_ , a part of his brain says, _just act_.

“Felicity,” he says, and for the first time his tone isn’t so uncertain, “Would you like to be my date?”

Her eyebrows fly to her hairline.

“Your date?” she repeats – it’s more of a squeak, and she’s tightened up considerably, and Oliver’s berating the part of his brain that told him to just act on his instincts.

“I just meant – I didn’t want to go to this thing alone, but I understand if you –”

“Yes,” she says, cutting off his strangely Felicity-esque ramble, “I’d love to.”

She’s smiling. He’s smiling.

The day that started out so miserable turned out to be a whole lot better.

* * *

They make arrangements for the trip to Starling City two weeks later.

They’re to meet at the store, where one of Felicity’s high school aged employees is being trusted with it for the night. Felicity says she’s known her for a long time, and Evelyn really wants the extra hours to pay for her homecoming dress, so it works out.

Oliver fiddles with the tie around his neck uncomfortably. He had to dig his old suits out from his closet – hasn’t had much use for them lately. The designer label, that he once cherished, feels uncomfortable and flashy on him now.

He’s waiting on the sidewalk outside _Smoaker’s Corner,_ watching the road carefully for Felicity to pull up. He’s never actually seen her car, since she walks to work or anywhere else she needs to get to in town.

He wonders what kind of car she has. Probably some fun-sized bright thing to match her personality. He hopes to god it’ll have legroom, since it’s a few hours drive into the city and he’d like to be comfortable.

Imagine his surprise, then, when a pickup truck parks on the curb and Felicity hops out.

“Hey!” she says brightly, “Ready to go?”

Oliver looks at the truck with his mouth hanging open.

The truck is huge. It’s old, probably Thea’s age – if he’s being generous – with gray-blue paint.

“This is your car?” he asks stupidly.

Felicity walks around the truck to meet him on the sidewalk.

“Yes,” she says with a knowing smile, as though she expected his surprise. She pats the door affectionately to emphasize her statement.

When he turns away from the – huge – truck to look at her, he’s thrown for a completely different reason.

In her time at work, Oliver’s come to understand Felicity’s style. She usually wears bright, flowy kind of dresses that are comfortable to move around in, and just casual enough to fit the theme of the store. With the weather getting colder, she’s opted for jeans and sweater pairings that maintain the same bright appearance as her dresses.

Today, she’s wearing a black cocktail dress that hugs her figure carefully, its straps winding around under her shoulders, and a thin gold chain draws his eyes down to her neck and collarbone. Her hair is curled and open on her shoulders, and her feet have strappy high heels with a concerningly thin, tall stems.

Oliver’s mouth feels very, very dry.

“You… You look really nice,” he says, and he feels like the world’s biggest idiot. It’s the understatement of the century, but his brain’s having trouble finding the right words to say without sounding like a tool.

Still, she smiles in a bashful kind of way, looking down and tucking her hair behind one ear.

“Thanks,” she says, “I was worried about being _too much,_ but then I realized I don’t know how you Starling City folk like to party it up, so...”

She trails off, straightening out invisible wrinkles in her dress. Oliver’s shakes his head.

“You look perfect,” No, so apparently, he’s not done embarrassing himself.

She smiles again.

“We should get going!” she says.

Oliver climbs in the passenger seat of the truck, and he has to stop himself from leaning over to watch Felicity’s tiny frame hop into the car. The puff of air she lets out once she’s in her seat and starting the car tells him that this is a battle she’s still not used to.

“Alright,” she says as she pulls her seatbelt over her chest, “Next stop: Starling City.”

When the car turns on, it makes a _horrible_ gurgling sound that makes Oliver’s eyes furrow, but Felicity seems unaffected.

“Uh, Felicity?”

“Yeah?”

“Is your car okay?”

She gives him a confused look.

“Yeah, why?”

“Oh,” he says casually, “It just sounds… off.”

“Hey, don’t talk bad about my car,” she says with tease in her voice, patting the dashboard, “He’s seen me through a lot of tough times and long drives. We’ll be fine.”

“He?” Oliver echoes. Now he has to fight a smile. “Felicity, are you telling me you named your car?”

She raises her chin defiantly.

“As it so happens, yes,” she says, “His name is Tiny.”

A beat passes before Oliver barks out a laugh.

“Alright then,” he says, “Let’s get going.”

* * *

Tiny groans the entire time they’re on the highway.

Oliver stops trying to think about it.

* * *

“Felicity, if you’re lost, just tell me.”

“We are not lost, the GPS is saying –”

“The GPS is wrong. I used to live here, I know that street is only a one-way. Come on, let me –”

“Oliver, I can handle it.”

* * *

She could not handle it. They were lost for half an hour.

* * *

They arrive at the venue of the engagement party – late, thanks to Felicity – and Oliver has to stop himself from laughing out loud.

It's at a country club. Oliver distinctly remembers a conversation with Tommy Merlyn in their early twenties, where his friend made Oliver swear that if he ever did these kind of clichéd rich people things, Oliver shoot him in the head.

Now here he is, watching his friend throw a party straight out of the one percenter’s handbook.

A few heads turn as Oliver and Felicity walk up the steps, but he tries to ignore them.  

No one makes any immediate move to greet him – though, he recognizes all of them, even remembering most names (thank you, Robert Queen’s business training) – instead they pause over their drinks and hor d’oeuvres, give him one passing glance before pretending to be interested in something else.

Oliver scoffs.

He shouldn’t have come here.

Felicity’s hand finds its way around his arm as they walk, curled in as a gesture that comforts him and reminds him that he’s not alone.

They find the couple of the hour in the middle of the room, mingling with other guests. Oliver has to pause to look at his old friends.

Even though it’s only been a few months since he had to leave Starling City, a part of him expected them to look different. Perhaps it’s a reflection of how he feels about himself; since the move, he feels miles different from the person he was when he lived here, he feels more sure of himself, more mature and put together.

Tommy Merlyn looks the same. He’s wearing a three-piece suit and a wide grin as he talks with someone Oliver can vaguely remember as the CFO at Merlyn Global. He’s gesturing in the way he always did when in the middle of the story, pointing to Laurel with a laugh. Laurel’s smiling at him as he talks, raising a hand to brush her hair back and letting her large diamond ring catch in the light.

For the first time, Oliver watches his friend, and his ex-girlfriend, and lets himself feel angry.

Initially, when Tommy never reached out to him, Oliver was hurt. Then, he started to make excuses for his friend, again and again for months on end, naively hoping that doing so would make the reality harder to accept.

The truth is, his friends left him behind.

There are so many things Oliver wants to say to him now. Dozens of opening lines run through his mind, ranging from uncomfortably passive aggressive to full on making-a-scene territory.

None of those get used when Tommy spots him first and his smile drops into an expression of surprise.

He excuses himself from the conversation and walks over slowly.

“Ollie,” his friend says. Laurel follows not far behind him, wearing an uncomfortable smile, “I didn’t think you would make it.”

Oliver’s teeth grind together. He RSVP’d, like he was supposed to. This shouldn’t have been a surprise, but Tommy’s tone makes it sound like doesn’t belong here, like he wasn’t _invited._

Instead of voicing any of these thoughts, Oliver paints on a fake smile. Being among the Starling elite, he finds it’s not hard to slip into old habits after all.

“Well, I couldn’t miss my chance to see if it was true,” he says, a lightness in his voice that makes him cringe internally, “Tommy Merlyn, settling down. Now I’ve seen everything.”

It sounds so phony to his own ears, he thinks his friend might see right through it, but Tommy’s uncertain expression melts into another easy-going smile.

“I know,” he says, relief colouring his tone, “I missed you buddy.”

He lunges forward, throwing his arms around Oliver’s shoulders and clapping him on the back.

“Missed you too,” Oliver says, biting down a comment about how long its been since he’s contacted him. When they pull apart, Oliver’s eyes meet Laurel for the first time.

He takes a chance to really look at the two of them, as a couple. Even with the uncertainty on their faces, no doubt because of Oliver’s presence, they really do look happy together. There’s a certain glow about them that wasn’t there when he lived in Starling City.

“Congratulations, you guys,” he says, and he’s surprised by how sincerely he means it, “Really. I’m happy for you.”

Tommy grins, and then his eyes trail over to Oliver’s left side. He raises his eyebrow at Oliver in a familiar gesture.

“Uh,” Oliver suddenly feels uncertain, “This is my date, Felicity Smoak.”

Felicity, who had been silent throughout the exchange with Tommy, gives a polite smile and holds her hand out.

“Hi,” she says, “Congratulations on your engagement.”

He can see by the way she presses her lips together and curls her fingers into a fist that she’s trying to keep her statements short.

Tommy’s grin turns from his standard one to something a little more knowing.

“Nice to meet you, Felicity,” he says, “So, how do you know our Ollie?”

“We work together,” she answers easily, and Oliver thinks she’s being generous by saying _together,_ when she is pretty decidedly his boss. Maybe she thinks she’s sparing his ego in front of his old friends.

Tommy looks like he wants to say more – lots more – before someone calls his name.

He looks back to them regretfully.

“To be continued,” he says firmly, “Ollie, we still need to catch up.”

Oliver nods once, though he knows there’s not a good chance of that happening.

Once they’re alone, Felicity turns to him with her eyebrows raised.

“So…” she says.

“So?”

“Not bad,” she comments, “Or, not as bad as I thought. There was no drink throwing or yelling. Or anything other than polite small talk, really. I’m impressed.”

Oliver huffs.

“I’m not that bad,” he says defensively.

“Oh, I didn’t mean you,” she says quickly, turning her head to the side, “I meant them.”

He follows her gaze, which is turned to Tommy and Laurel. They’re mingling with a few other people in black suits, but Oliver doesn’t miss the way both of their eyes trail over to him.

He shakes his head.

“The worst is over with,” he says, stopping a waiter holding tall champagne flutes, “I think we can celebrate that.”

He hands Felicity one of the glasses, and she accepts it, slowly taking a sip.

“So,” she says after a moment of drinking and looking around the room, “This is how the elite of Starling City live it up.”

“It sure is,” Oliver says.

“Gotta say, it’s a little disappointing.”

That does it – Oliver finally laughs, his shoulders shaking slightly, and he can feel some of the tension easing away. Felicity watches it with a proud grin.

“There’s that smile,” she says, “I was starting to think we left that back in Star Creek.”

“I’m sorry,” he says once he’s recovered, “I’ve been feeling… tense.”

“I’ve noticed,” she puts a hand on his arm, “But you’re doing just fine. Don’t worry.”

Oliver wants to respond, to tell her that it’s all thanks to her being here that he feels okay, that he’s so grateful she came with him, but he doesn’t get the chance.

“Oliver!” a familiar voice calls out.

He turns to see Walter Steele, in all his distinguished, British glory, walking towards him with a smile.

“Walter,” he holds his hand out for the other man to shake, “It’s nice to see you.”

Oliver’s not lying. He liked Walter Steele in his time at Queen Consolidated. He was a good man with a rare ability to look at the human side of things, which was a breath of fresh air in the bottom-line obsessed culture of QC.

Perhaps for that reason, or others that Oliver doesn’t know, Walter was one of the few executives who kept their jobs when the family company was taken under Stellmoor International’s empire.

“It’s nice to see you, too,” Walter says, “I was so sorry to hear about your family, I never did get a chance to say it in person.”

_And, there it is._

Oliver fights to keep his polite smile in place. He doesn’t know how to respond, even though he anticipated comments like that, so instead he just nods.

“I did see your father last week, actually,” Walter continues, “I know he’s working hard to get your family back on their feet. I told him if you needed anything…”

He trails off, with an unspoken promise of _I’m here_ , to which Oliver has to bite back his comment. Sure, it’s easy to say he’d be here for them now, but this was the first time he was hearing from a co-worker and family friend who he actually liked and respected.

“Of course, we appreciate it.” Oliver says. When Felicity shifts from one foot to another, he jumps at a chance to change the conversation, “Walter, this is Felicity Smoak, she’s my friend accompanying me from Star Creek.”

Felicity, looking oddly jumpy, now, holds her hand out.

“Hi,” she says, “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

She looks stiff now, nervous. Oliver wonders if she knew about Walter from before. He was never as public a figure as the Queens were, but he did give a Ted Talk two years ago. Oliver didn’t pay attention, it was about business and globalization and bored him to tears, but perhaps Felicity had watched it. She is into that kind of thing.

“Felicity Smoak,” Walter repeats slowly, furrowing his eyebrows as though the name tugs at a memory, “Nice to meet you.”

She gives a nervous smile and doesn’t say anything.

“I was just on my way out, actually,” says Walter, “I have a business trip early tomorrow morning that I need to prepare for. But it was good seeing you tonight.”

Oliver nods.

“You too, Walter.”

“Send my parents your best.”

With one final handshake, Walter is gone. Felicity watches him leave with an indecipherable expression on her face.

“Three down,” Oliver mutters, looking into the crowd, “Fifty more to go.”

* * *

The rest of the night passes by without incident. Oliver mingles with all the big fish of Starling City with what he thinks is a decent amount of restraint, even though by the fifth ‘ _we were so sorry to hear about what happened to your family’,_ he’s feeling homicidal.

Felicity is great throughout. She keeps her hand on his arm through the small talk and patiently lets herself be introduced by Oliver.

The only hiccup comes when a group of men formerly employed at the finance department of Queen Consolidated ask her what she does.

“I work in computer science,” she says vaguely. Oliver tries not to let his surprise show. Not that it’s entirely inaccurate, he just wonders if she’s holding out the store for a reason. Nothing about her seemed at all ashamed of what she does before tonight.

“Oh wow,” one of the men – Oliver doesn’t remember his name, despite the Robert Queen training, because this guy was a douche and wasn’t really worth the space in his memory – pulls his phone out of his pocket, “My phone has been acting up since the newest one came out, do you think you’d be able to fix it?”

The other finance bros burst out laughing – it’s their idea of a joke, and Oliver has to clench his jaw. He remembers being one of these guys, so caught up in the business world they thought only their work mattered, and that any other field even in their own company was a joke.

Felicity, to her credit, keeps a tight smile on her face and doesn’t respond, though the stiffness in her neck tells Oliver he should pull her away from this conversation before things take a turn.

He guides them away slowly, glancing at the time.

“It’s getting late,” he says, “We should probably get going if we want to make it back home at a decent time.”

Felicity nods. Her sunny smile when she arrived at this party is long gone, and for the first time Oliver regrets asking her to be his date.

“Okay.”

* * *

The car ride home is silent. Felicity fiddles with the radio for a bit before the old thing craps out on her, and she hits it with her knuckles before placing her hand back on the steering wheel.

Oliver doesn’t like the silence. It’s not Felicity. It tugs at him in the same way his tie did all night, like he couldn’t _not_ notice how strange it felt.

(The tie was discarded the minute they hit the road. It sits in his lap now. He never plans on wearing it again)

“Thank you for coming with me tonight,” he says, just to break the quiet.

“Not a problem,” Felicity says without taking her eyes off the road.

They’re on the highway now. Tiny groans the minute they merged, like each roll of the tires against the pavement is a personal offence.

“Did…” Oliver hesitates, eyes darting back and forth between her and the road, “Did something happen?”

“Why do you ask, Oliver?” she says, her voice is flat.

“I don’t know,” he admits, “But things were okay while we were there and after you just…”

“I’m just tired,” she says simply, “It was a long drive and a long night.”

Oliver nods.

She switches lanes, and Tiny groans as she does.

“For gods sake, Felicity,” Oliver comments, feeling some of her irritation catch him as well, “Get this car checked out when we get home. This isn’t safe.”

Felicity exhales noisily.

“The car is fine, Oliver,” she says, the patience that she had this afternoon long gone, “Just fine. It may not be the nicest thing money can buy, but –”

“Oh, Jesus,” Oliver shakes his head, “Is _that_ what this is about? It’s not about the money, I just want you to be safe.”

“Sure,” she says.

“You’re unbelievable,” he scoffs. It’s not about the car anymore, “You’re the one who suddenly started acting weird halfway through the party. I didn’t force you to come, you know.”

“Oh please,” Felicity says, “If anything, you were –”

She doesn’t finish her sentence, because the car does a horrible little jerk that makes them lean against their seatbelts. Tiny gives a horrible little gurgling sound and slows down.

“Oh no,” Felicity groans, “No, no, no. Come on, buddy. We can make it.”

Tiny doesn’t listen, and instead he keeps slowing down. Felicity barely has a chance to steer the car towards the side of the road before the car stops moving at all.

She hits the steering wheel once in frustration.

Oliver shifts forward, angling his body towards her.

“If you say, ‘I told you so’,” she says slowly, still looking straight ahead, “I _will_ leave you here on the side of the road.”

* * *

Oliver waits outside while Felicity makes a phone call. A part of him has the impulse to open the hood of her truck to see what went wrong – it just feels like the proper, _manly man_ thing to do – before he remembers he knows next to nothing about cars.

He turns to Felicity, who is hovering by the bed of the truck with her head tilted down as she speaks on the phone.

Her feet kick some of the rocks on the side of the road. She switched the heels she wore to the party out before they started driving, exchanging them for a pair of pink and white striped flip flops.

He walks over just as she wraps the call up.

“Okay, that’s perfect,” she says, “Thanks, Cisco.”

She ends the call with a sigh, looking up as he approaches.

“There’s a mechanic in town,” she explains, “He has a tow truck, and luckily he was still awake. I owe him a favour, fixed his TV last month.”

She waves a hand in the air.

“Anyway, he said he’ll get us, but it’ll take a while.”

Oliver nods. He doesn’t know what to say with the air of their fight earlier still following them.

Felicity doesn’t wait for a response, instead she hops onto the bed of the truck. Her feet dangle off the edge, and she pats the spot next to her.

He sits down hesitantly, wondering what she’ll say. She just turns her neck back to look at the night sky.

“It’s so nice out here,” she says quietly, “With all the stars. There’s one thing you can’t get out in Starling City.”

There is it again.

“Felicity,” he says, speaking for the first time since the car broke down, “I have to ask. What had you acting so strange while we were at the party?”

She doesn’t seem angered by his question. She looks down to her lap with a sad smile.

“There’s a lot I haven’t told you about me,” she admits, and then she’s adjusting herself in the bed, “Get comfortable. We’re going to be here a while.”

They both settle deeper into the truck’s bed, Oliver lets his legs stretch out his shoulder brushes against her. She’s curled in, playing with the bracelet that dangles off her wrist.

“I wasn’t always in Star Creek,” she starts, “If I had it my way, I wouldn’t have been here now.”

Oliver knew the first part, but her second statement takes him by surprise. She’s always had such a warm fondness for her hometown, nothing ever gave away that she was unhappy.

“My parents met while they owned separate businesses next to each other,” she says, “My dad did repairs, my mom ran a coffee shop.”

Oliver nods in understanding.

“You see where this is going,” she comments, “When I grew up it was the same way it is now. The internet part was my idea. I used to spend all my time there. I mostly helped my dad while he did computer repairs. I was fascinated by the way he would pick things apart, make them whole again, find the problem like it was just a puzzle.”

She’s speaking with a distant fondness now, a sad one. He’s never met her parents before, she’s never mentioned them until tonight, and he never thought to ask. A sinking feeling starts to set in his stomach.

“I never liked it here when I was in high school. I thought the people were small minded, that I was too smart for them and I could do so much more with my life. I graduated early, went away to MIT for college, because in my mind it was best to go far away. I never visited.”

She says the last part with so much regret, it tugs at his chest.

“Anyway. My parents were okay with it, even though they weren’t happy that I couldn’t come home. I did well in school, finished my master’s and applied for all these jobs at big companies. I didn’t tell them, because they assumed that I would finish school and come back home. I was…”

Her voice catches, and for the first time she stops because of a trembling lip.

“I was on a flight to Starling City for a job interview, to meet with Walter Steele of Queen Consolidated for a job in the applied sciences department. It was my dream, finally coming into place,” she says. Her voice is thick with emotion, “When I landed, I saw the missed calls. My parents were in a car accident. They didn’t make it.”

When Oliver sees the first tear catch in the dim light, he follows an impulse and takes her hand.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. He can feel the way she’s starting to tremble under his palm, “You don’t have to tell me.”

“I want to,” she says, taking a steadying breath before she continues, “They left me everything. The shop, the apartment above it, this truck. I never once looked back. Until tonight.”

Oliver leans his head down, his cheek brushing against the crown of her head.

“Tonight, when you met Walter,” he finishes.

She nods.

“I don’t regret taking over the shop,” she says, “It’s my one connection to my parents. But sometimes I just feel so… angry, and helpless, knowing that everything changed that day and I came back here. And tonight, I saw a glimpse of what could have been… I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, “If, by bringing you tonight, I made you…”

She’s shaking her head before he can finish.

“No, it’s okay,” she says, “I’m starting to realize that staying in Star Creek wasn’t so bad. I got to meet you.”

She looks up at him for the first time. In the dim light coming from the truck, Oliver can see that her eyes are still glassy, even if the sadness in her voice is gone. She looks down again, her eyelashes sweeping over her cheeks and her back straightening, and it takes Oliver a moment to realize she’s glancing at his lips.

They’re so close, now, Oliver would barely have to move. It’s so quiet all he can hear are the cicadas and his heart beating faster in his ears.

_Don’t think, just act._

Of course, Felicity Smoak bests him at everything, because her hand cups his jaw and brings his lips onto hers.

Oliver would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about this moment for months, on how he would do it, how it would feel. He never expected it to be here, now, after a long night and a tearful confession.

But the truth is that this moment is so much better than his fantasies over the coffee maker.

Her lips are a little chapped, from the way her lipstick had been chewed off over the night, but she is warm and inviting and pulls him in. Their position isn’t ideal, but his hands spread across her waist to bring her closer, until she’s half in his lap.

Her hair falls over as she tilts down, brushing against his cheeks. The scent of her perfume surrounds him, he gets lost in the feeling.

Sitting in the back of a truck, making out beneath the stars, a part of Oliver wonders if he’s unlocked some kind of small towner merit badge.

But then Felicity’s gasping at his touch, whispering his name and— yeah, he doesn’t care if he’s become the biggest townie cliché on the planet. He’d tattoo Star Creek on his face if it meant he can just feel like this all the time.

The sound of tires crunching against pavement pulls them apart. Oliver’s breathing is heavy, his chest rising and falling as he tries to blink into the darkness. In the dim light, Felicity is looking at him with her mouth dropped open, and her eyes heavily lidded.

Her hand is still on his cheek. She brushes her thumb back and forth once, to the corner of his mouth. When he sees the smudge on her lips he realizes that some of the colour must have transferred over.

“To be continued,” she whispers with a shy smile.

* * *

The drive home is quiet.

Not awkwardly so, but quiet in a way Oliver can only describe as anticipation.

The mechanic, Cisco, tows Felicity’s car and gives them a ride back, all of them squeezed into the seats.

Felicity’s wearing Oliver’s suit jacket around her shoulders, making quiet conversation about Cisco about his family as they drive. Oliver looks out the open road as they do, and only turns back in surprise when Felicity’s fingers intertwine with his.

She gives him the same small grin she had back in the truck, her cheeks tinged pink. It’s impossible not to mirror her expression.

They get dropped off in front of the store.

“Thank you again for this, Cisco,” Felicity says as they climb out of the tow truck.

“After everything you’ve done to help me? Don’t worry about it, Felicity,” he says, “I’ll give you an update tomorrow morning.”

She nods and gives him a little wave as he drives off.

For the first time since the kiss, they’re left alone.

Oliver’s foot taps against the sidewalk as he tries to mask his uncertainty. He doesn’t know what’s _next,_ here. Felicity seemed pretty sure of herself as they kissed, and on the way home, but now that they’re back in Star Creek, things may have changed. Maybe she remembers what their reality really is, maybe –

“Well,” she says, her hand is on the door of the shop. Her eyebrow is raised as she looks at him over her shoulder, “Would you like to come up?”

Oliver would be a fool not to say yes.

He follows her up the dim, narrow staircase that leads to her apartment. Part of him barely has the time to register that this is his first time seeing her place, despite all the time they spend together.

When she opens the door and flips the lights on, she turns to him with a small, embarrassed smile.

“So… this is it,” she holds her arms out awkwardly, “It’s not the greatest. And I didn’t have a lot of time to clean this week.”

She kicks a pair of jeans on the floor and watches as they slide under her bed – the whole place is small enough that they’re technically in her bedroom just by entering.

Oliver doesn’t have much time to look around – he likes the bright pillows strewn on her bed, he thinks idly before Felicity’s gently pushing him back against them.

Let it never be said that Oliver can’t take a hint – he cranes his neck up to kiss her, both hands cupping her face.

It’s when his mouth travels down to the spot of her neck and collarbone that taunted him all night that his hands start wandering around the back of her dress.

“Where,” he lets out an annoyed huff against her skin, “The hell is the zipper?”

Felicity’s stomach shakes with laughter.

“It’s on the side,” she says, and his hand freezes on her back, where he had been looking.

“Side,” he mutters, “Sure.”

The sound of the zip sliding down is music to Oliver’s ears, but then Felicity’s pushing at his shoulder again.

“Oliver,” she says with heavily lidded eyes, “Wait, wait.”

He drops his hand off her dress, looking at her uncertainly.

“I just,” she presses her lips together, “I need to know, what we’re doing here, before…”

Oliver nods, feeling relived. This is something he can do.

They both adjust so that they’re sitting up on the bed. Felicity tucks her feet under herself, her hair is a little messier than it was at the party and Oliver fights off the smug feeling he gets at the sight.

He takes a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

“I’ve had feelings for you. For longer than I’ve realized,” he shakes his head, an embarrassed laugh escaping, “I don’t even think I stood a chance.”

Felicity gives him a smile that reinforces his point.

“Good,” she says, her cheeks turning pink, “That’s good. Because I felt the same. And – yeah, I’m not going to ruin this with more talking.”

This time when he falls back against the bed, everything happens a lot easier.

* * *

Being with Felicity feels just as falling for her did.

It’s simple. There’s no question about it, there’s no denying the warmth in his chest when they’re together.

He’s never felt this happy in his life – not in Starling City, with all the money in the world under his thumb. He’s quickly learned that life wasn’t happiness. True happiness is in Felicity squinting at him with a frown as he leaves the bed for his morning jogs, in the way she smiles over the breakfast he makes them, it’s in holding her hand and kissing her and winking at her from across the room at _Smoaker’s Corner_.

Being with Felicity means he’s spending far less time at the motel now – where his family is still holed up, living out of their suitcases as though they expect to return to Starling City at any minute. He’s not officially moved into her apartment, but he has a key and half of his clothes are here, and Felicity doesn’t seem to mind him staying.

Maybe they’re moving too fast, in a way that would have scared him once. He finds he doesn’t care.

He learns the whole town was quietly waiting for them to get together, too.

It’s a little strange, to be sitting on a bench in Warner Park with his arm around Felicity, only to be interrupted by a person he’s never met before and being congratulated on “ _finally_ ” getting together.

He’s introduced to some of her friends – a couple named John Diggle and Lyla Michaels, who Felicity describes more as family than friends.

John waits until after dinner, when Lyla and Felicity are in the kitchen, discussing something Lyla recently purchased for her daughter. He is smiling as he watches his wife, but once they are no longer within eyeline his expression turns serious.

“Oliver,” he says, “I’m going to do something that might seem cliché, and something Felicity will probably hate me for saying. But I need to say it, because that girl over there is like my little sister. So, I’m only going to say this once.”

Oliver’s mouth parts slightly as he speaks, and he forces it shut and nods.

In his time with girlfriends in Starling City, Oliver had grown familiar with the protective dad/brother routine. It used to make him roll his eyes, but something about this one makes his back straighten, there’s a new gravity that wasn’t before, and he realizes it’s because he doesn’t want to mess this up.

“She’s been through a lot with losing her parents a few years ago,” John continues in a quiet but firm voice, “She doesn’t need any more reasons to be hurt. So don’t give me a reason to hurt _you_. Got it?”

Oliver can only nod, and the conversation quickly ends when Lyla and Felicity return to the room.

Oliver never gets the chance to tell John that he would never hurt her if he could help it. That he can’t imagine breaking her heart anymore than he can losing her. That he’s pretty sure he’s already in love with her.

The words float through his mind once he and Felicity return to her apartment that night – lying in bed with her and pulling the covers closer (her heater’s broken and she refuses to call for help, the stubborn woman that she is).

“I had fun tonight,” he says thoughtfully.

Felicity visibly relaxes in his arms.

“I’m so glad,” she says, “John’s like my oldest friend, and I don’t exactly bring just anyone to meet him.”

Oliver doesn’t know how to name the way his heart beats heavier at her words.

“He’s a good guy,” he observes, “I could tell he cares about you.”

Felicity raises her neck to look at him.

“Oh god,” she asks with a cringe, “Did he do that _thing_?”

“What thing?” Oliver asks innocently. Something – instinct, the bro-code, whatever you want to call it – tells him that his conversation with John is something that should be kept between them.

“Oh, don’t,” she says, shoving him gently in the chest, “The whole, _hurt her and they’ll never find your body_ thing. I hate it.”

“He’s a good friend,” is all he can say.

She groans.

“Ugh, remind me to call him tomorrow and yell at him for that. I’m not fourteen anymore.”

Oliver can only laugh – a carefree, easy sound that is a testament to how much things have changed since his first arrival at Star Creek.

When Felicity shoves him deeper against her mattress, covering his grin with her lips, Oliver lets her.

For a time, everything seems absolutely perfect. His relationship with Felicity, his new friendships, the way he’s further settled into Star Creek and accepted this strange small town and all it’s quirks.

But when he does go to check in on his family one afternoon, the happy bubble he’d built finally bursts.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s the second part, as promised, in Felicity’s POV. This part was not exactly planned but when I had got close to the end of part one, I felt like they deserved to have a more rounded out ending. It’s a little shorter just to give closure to their story.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this little universe as much as I did. Enjoy!

Felicity has known Oliver for almost a year now, and has been dating him for a month, so she thinks she has a fairly good handle on judging his mood based on his expression.

Oliver Queen wears his heart on his sleeve. When he’s happy, there’s no force on _Earth_ that can stop his wide smile, his dimple stretching out against his cheek, the blush on his cheeks when he looks down and tries to hide his grin. She’d gotten quite used to that look in the past few weeks – and knowing she had a part in that look makes her feel all warm inside, too.

When he’s upset, Oliver gets tense. He closes into himself, tries to contain his anger until he gets in a place where he feels like he’s in more control. Felicity learned about _that_ one in their first week of dating, when someone threw a brick through the _Smoaker’s Corner_ window and they had to close for the day.

(They soon found out it was Cooper’s friend Myron, who was apparently indignant on his friend’s behalf for Felicity’s new relationship. Cooper apologized. Felicity hesitantly accepted. Oliver, not so much)

Being armed with this carefully collected knowledge, Felicity tenses when she sees Oliver walk through the shop, yanking the door open with a little more force than usual and a deep frown.

He doesn’t look at her, but he marches to the counter and wraps the forest green apron around his waist.

The store isn’t so busy at the moment – it’s midmorning on a weekday, in between rushes – so Felicity decides to abandon her screen repair job and walks over to his end of the shop.

(The whole thing may be hers, but she’s taken to calling the café area Oliver’s, even though he’d never consider it such)

“So, I take it that meeting with your parents for lunch didn’t go so well,” she comments, leaning her elbows onto the counter.

Oliver opens the display case to check on the scones. His jaw tightens for a moment before he moves on to cleaning the counter.

“No,” he says simply, not looking up, “It didn’t.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Oliver pauses mid-wipe.

“I just…” he shakes his head, “I found out my dad isn’t who I thought he was. I can’t really look at him right now.”

Felicity furrows her eyebrows. She can tell by the few times he’s mentioned him that Oliver’s not very close with his father – there’s an underlying resentment that sounds like he thinks Robert Queen failed his family by losing their savings – but he’s never been genuinely angry at him.

She places her hand over his. She doesn’t want to push him, but she’s never seen him like this.

“Oliver?”

He finally looks up, and his eyes look glassy.

“Found out that all those times he’s been travelling to Starling City, when we thought he was working to get our family back on their feet?” his voice is low, the anger barely contained, “He was meeting some woman. His _mistress._ ”

“Oh, Oliver…” Felicity walks around the counter to meet him.

“I found out because I wanted to borrow his suitcase and there was this…” Oliver trails off, “When I asked him he didn’t even deny it. And the worst part is that _she_ called while we were talking and he just answered and I had to listen to it.”

Felicity winces.

“My mom doesn’t know,” he continues, “I don’t think. He asked me not to make a big deal out of it. But how can I not, right? I mean, this is…”

“I know,” she says, rubbing her hand sympathetically across his shoulder blades, “Do you need a break today? I can call someone in. You don’t need to work.”

Oliver shakes his head.

“No, I want to be here,” he insists, “It’s probably good to keep my mind off it. Plus, I’d get to…”

He breaks off with a small grin, one that embarrasses him and he has to duck his head.

Felicity furrows her eyebrows at the abrupt change in his mood.

“What?” she asks.

“I get to be with you,” he admits, “And that’ll make me feel better.”

Felicity feels her cheeks go hot. Sometimes Oliver would unexpectedly say the sweetest things, with a bashful little expression that tells her he’s definitely never had to say it before, and it catches her completely off guard.

“Well good,” she says, feeling oddly flustered, “I’m glad. I’ll be over there, with my second cracked iPhone of the week if you need me.”

As if noticing her change in mood, he gives her a smile and nods. With one final squeeze of their intertwined hands, Felicity reluctantly returns to her station.

* * *

Their first fight as a couple happens on an uncharacteristically rainy day in Star Creek.

Felicity only remembers this because a distant part of her felt like the quiet thunder rumbling as they yelled was very movie-like.

Anyway.

It started with a leak in the roof that Felicity decided to mend with the good old bucket-on-the-floor method. Then, the rain got worse and the power went out, forcing them to close the shop for the day.

Both Oliver and Felicity, who decided to stay in the store to handle inventory and get some cleaning done, are left alone in the cold, dark store.

The quiet _drip, drip, drip_ is all Felicity can hear without the usual carefully selected playlist playing through the speakers. Oliver is at his station, hand cleaning some of his baking appliances quietly. Felicity steals glances at him every so often as she pretends to rearrange the basket of headphones. Her phone buzzes in her pocket. She holds the power button down without reading the screen.

Something has been off since this morning. Oliver seemed okay when they woke up, but sometime between her rising from the bed to go to the washroom to returning to get dressed had him change. He got all tense and quiet, but she didn’t push it.

It’s been a few weeks since he found out the news about his dad cheating. Though Oliver’s been handling it pretty well, he’s been avoiding seeing any member of his family, and every so often the toll of the secret would start to leak into his mood. Felicity assumed that this morning was just another one of those instances.

But looking at him from across the shop, where his eyebrows are tightly drawn together as he wipes the surface of his mixer, Felicity wonders if it’s something else.

“I’m almost done here,” she announces quietly, breaking the silence for the first time in about twenty minutes.

Oliver looks up and gives her a little aloof nod.

“It’s going to get cold soon,” she continues, feeling awkward without any response, “I’ll probably lock up here and see if I have any candles in my apartment. So if you want to head out, that’s totally fine.”

Oliver sends her a questioning look.

“Maybe… you could go visit your family to see if they’re okay? It’s been a few weeks.”

His head turns back, and she thinks she sees his eyes hit the ceiling before he does.

“Okay, can you please say something?” she says, “You’ve been acting weird all morning.”

“I don’t want to see my dad right now,” Oliver says exasperatedly, one eyebrow ticked upward, “I didn’t think I’d have to explain _why_ to you.”

“That’s fine,” Felicity says patiently, “But your mother and sister probably miss you too. I’m guessing. Since I’ve never actually met them.”

The last part slips out completely by accident.

She’s not the kind of person who worries about meeting parents and what that _means_ for the _steps in their relationship,_ she knows Oliver cares for her and that’s enough. But the moment she says it, she realizes that, yeah, she kind of cares that Oliver never even entertains the idea of bringing her home.

Hell, he’s been working here for months and the only member of the Queen family who’s stopped by the store was Thea when she accidentally took his phone in the morning instead of her own.

Even then, Thea waited by the sidewalk for Oliver to get on his break to swap their phones out. Felicity’s never exchanged a word with the girl.

“Is that what this is about?” Oliver crosses his arms, “You’re upset because I don’t bring you home to my family? It’s not about you, if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s _them._ They hate Star Creek and barely step foot farther than Warner Park. And my dad is just – you really want to meet my dad, after everything I told you?”

Felicity sighs in frustration. This conversation got away from her.

“I – no,” she runs her hand through her hair, “That wasn’t the point. I meant that you should go check in on your family, Oliver, even if you’re upset at your dad right now, your mom and sister don’t deserve that.”

Felicity’s phone buzzes again, and in the eerie silence of the store it’s so loud it may as well echo. She presses on the side button without a second thought.

“You going to answer that?” Oliver asks irately, “Thing’s been ringing all week. And since 6 this morning.”

“No,” Felicity says calmly, “It’s just spam.”

“Right,” Oliver says, “Spam from Gotham? Specifically, from the VP of Wayne Enterprise’s office line?”

Felicity tries to fight the shock from showing on her face.

“How did you –”

“Please,” he scoffs, “I used to be in business with these people, we had calls at least once a week. I stared at that number for two hours during conference calls, I’d know it anywhere.”

He’s moved around the counter now, so has she, both of them gradually inching forward throughout the conversation and standing next to the bucket under the leak.

“You hiding something from me, too, Felicity?” Oliver says quietly.

She sighs. This is something she wanted to avoid because, really, it’s not a big deal.

“I… There’s this recruiter who got in touch with me after I had graduated,” she says, “And obviously when the stuff with my parents happened    I lost contact. I don’t know how, but ever since we went to Starling City they found my information and passed it along to WE.”

She moves closer to him, taking his arm where it is crossed over the other on his chest.

“It doesn’t matter,” she continues, “They can keep calling. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Is that even what you want, Felicity?” Oliver asks quietly.

“What?” she feels caught.

“Is all of this,” Oliver gestures around the store, “Even what you want?”

Her throat feels oddly tight. She thinks back to what she had revealed to him – the night of their first kiss, on how the responsibility of the store was thrust upon her.

“It’s my family’s store,” she says carefully, “It’s the last thing I have left of my parents.”

“But is it what you _want_?”

Felicity doesn’t like this. The conversation’s _really_ gotten away from her now – they were talking about _his_ parents, not hers, and now it feels like she’s being backed into a corner.

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” she says, “I like it here. I’m not taking any other job. You don’t have to worry.”

“You didn’t tell me about it.”

He doesn’t phrase it as a question.

“I didn’t, because it doesn’t matter. Nothing’s changing.”

Oliver sighs.

“I just…” he runs a hand through his hair in frustration, “I don’t want you to look back one day and regret it. You were forced here when you had other plans, bigger plans, and now…”

“Oliver,” she says carefully, “I’m not your dad.”

“I never said you were.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Oliver stares hard at her. Neither of them say anything.

“Maybe I should get out of here for a bit,” he says eventually.

She nods. It’s what she told him to do in the first place, but now him leaving makes her feel uneasy.

He steps out without looking back. The bell that hangs above the _Smoaker’s Corner_ door rings quietly and as he passes there’s a gust of wind from outside.

Felicity is left alone, in the cold, dark store that doesn’t feel like home anymore.

* * *

After he is gone, Felicity throws herself into deep cleaning the store. It’s the whole nine yards – she gets deep into the corners and under the windowsills and that one uneven chair she never got around to fixing. No stone is left unturned.

By the time she finishes scrubbing the single stalled washroom, her fingers feel like they’re about to fall to her feet. She wipes her hand across her damp forehead and decides to call it a day – it’s getting dark out now and there’s not much else she can do down here without power.

She’d put off going to her apartment all day – somehow being alone in the store is not as bad as being alone at home, even when, until recently, she used to do both just fine.

In her apartment, she finds a few candles in the bathroom and lights them. The rain has mostly stopped, but the last power outage here in Star Creek, when Felicity was sixteen, lasted about two days.

It was one of the things that pushed her to MIT’s door, in hindsight.

It’s not until dusk that Felicity hears a key turning in the front door of her apartment. Her head snaps up from where she distracted herself with rearranging her bookshelf (which was probably a bad idea, considering how many candles she had lit in proximity to her large collection of paperbacks).

Oliver freezes by the entryway of her living room. His clothes look a little damp, his hair flattened against his head and his mouth turned downward in a frown.

“Hi,” she says, breaking the silence first.

“My mother knew,” he says in the place of a greeting, “About my dad’s affair. She knew and she just… She was okay with it. And it had been going on long before we lost the company.”

“Oliver…” Felicity moves forward, following the dim outline of his figure in the candlelight.

“You were right earlier,” he mumbles once she’s close enough, “When you didn’t tell me about the recruiter, I got spooked that you would hide more from me, and that wasn’t fair at all. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Felicity says simply. Her hand lands on his arm, where the ends of his t shirt meet skin. Both are damp and cold from the rain outside. She’s about to suggest that he change into something warm and dry.

“Ever since you told me that your parents’ store wasn’t your plan, I’ve been scared,” he continues in the same low voice, “You _are_ so much more than this town. You could be taking over the world.”

“Oliver,” she takes a steadying breath, “I’m okay here. It’s what my parents left me, it reminds me of them every day. I’m happy.”

Oliver doesn’t look convinced. Maybe it sounds flat even in her own ears – but she’s never let herself think about it too long. One night in Starling City soured her mood enough to fight with Oliver. But it’s true. She’d thrown herself into running the store for so long that she never considered how she felt.

“You don’t need to convince yourself,” he says, “You’re not just your parents’ legacy. Just like I’m not mine. I realized that today too.”

She raises her chin to look at him properly at that. His eyes look clearer than earlier this morning – like somewhere along the way he had an epiphany.

Her fingers dance around the edges of his damp shirt.

“We should really get you out of these wet clothes,” she mutters. It’s a deflection. A way to get out of an uncomfortable conversation because she doesn’t have an answer for him, but it works. A smirk grows on his lips.

“If you want me naked, all you need to do is ask, Felicity,” he says teasingly, before reaching for the collar of his shirt and pulling it over his head.

She has some kind of witty remark on the tip of her tongue, but it’s quickly swallowed by Oliver leaning down to kiss her.

* * *

Later, they’re tangled up in her bed, exhausted. Felicity’s head rests on his shoulder. In the gradually dimming light from the candles, she can barely make out the thin shine from the sweat he worked up – thanks to her, she notes with a tired satisfaction.

His hand works its way through her hair, until his fingers land on the ends and he brushes his hands back and forth against them.

“I love you,” he says, so quietly that she feels it in the vibrations of his chest rather than hearing it.

Her hand stops its path across his skin, and a rush of something completely unknown fills her.

“Maybe it’s too soon,” he continues quietly, “And maybe it should scare me. But today, when I was fighting with my parents, I realized I had so much now, since moving here, since being with you. You don’t have to say it back, I just wanted you to kn—”

“I love you too,” she says quickly, lifting her head so that she can look him in the eyes. It’s true. She realized it far too soon, somewhere between letting him into her store and taking him around to Star Creek’s sights and sounds, in the strange surge of protectiveness she felt at his friend’s engagement party, in kissing him in the back of her truck, and now.

She loves him. Plain and simple.

A wide smile grows on Oliver’s face at the words, the kind that lights him up and makes the corner of his eyes crinkle in her favourite way.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t have a speech prepared. Which I realize is pretty out of character for me,” she continues, “But I do. Love you.”

Oliver nods, lifting a hand to cup her jaw. 

Felicity learns that making up makes the fighting almost worth it.

* * *

The tides really turn one morning, a month later, when Felicity least expects it.

It’s early. So early that it’s still dark out, and Felicity squints at the shadows Oliver makes as he leans next to the bed.

She groans a little as she turns over, looking at the time and seeing that it’s barely 5 am.

Oliver’s head turns at the sound.

“Hey,” he says gently, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m just going on a run. Go back to sleep.”

Felicity rubs her hand over her face and eyes, shaking her head.

“My alarm’s going to go off in an hour,” she says, sleep leaving her voice, “Might as well get up. Could you get the lamp?”

Oliver flicks on the lamp and a dim, yellowy light fills the space.

Felicity groans and throws her arm over her eyes.

“Okay,” she admits, “That was a bad idea. Very bad.”

Oliver laughs.

Eventually, when she’s recovered from her theatrics, Felicity manages to sit up on the bed, squinting at Oliver’s slightly blurred figure.

“I’m exhausted from last night,” she says, referring to the games night some of the younger employees insisted they put on, “I just want to sleep forever.”

“They did raise a lot of money for their prom,” Oliver reasons, “It was a good turn out.”

Felicity agrees, but that doesn’t make her want to sleep any less.

“I wonder what it’s like to have weekends off,” she muses, “To be able to stay in bed on your Sunday and just laze around.”

“I had that for a while,” Oliver says, pulling his wireless headphones around his neck, “It wasn’t all that.”

“Still,” Felicity runs a hand through her tangled hair, “I wish I could just take today off and do nothing.”

“You still can,” Oliver says, “The perks of running your own business, I’m sure you can just come in a bit later. I’ll open up, if you want.”

It’s tempting.

“I can’t,” she replies, resigned, “I promised Evelyn that I’d fix her laptop’s trackpad before this big assignment tomorrow. She was going to work on it before her afternoon shift.”

Oliver shakes his head with a smile.

“Alright, I’ll see you downstairs.”

Later, when she makes her way to the shop, she finds Oliver at her computer instead of his station. Whatever he’s looking at on the screen has his eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

“I hope you’re just checking your email,” she comments, “It’s too early for the other thing.”

Oliver’s eyes tear away from the screen and he gives her a wry smile.

“Very funny,” he says, “I actually _was_ just going to check my email, but then this thing on the desktop caught my eye.”

“Oh?” Felicity says, setting her bag down on the counter behind him.

“Yeah. Want to tell me what ‘ _Smoak Tech Plans_ ’ means?”

Felicity spins around, eyes wide.

“Did you go snooping through my files?” she asks, feeling indignant.

“What?” Oliver holds his hands up, away from her keyboard, “No, I would never. I was just looking at the file name.”

Felicity’s shoulders fall.

“Okay,” she breathes out, “Okay. that’s fine, I guess.

“If I ask again, will you bite my head off?” Oliver asks.

Felicity sighs.

“It’s…” she waves a hand in the air, avoiding his eyes, “It’s like doodling, you know? Something I did a long time ago, when I was still at MIT and I thought one day I’d have a big computer science brand with my own name on it. I couldn’t bring myself to delete it.”

“Is it something you think about often?”

There’s concern in Oliver’s eyes now, and Felicity knows that if she gets into it now he’s going to keep _pushing_ , in the way he always does when he means well but can’t get the hint that she’s uncomfortable.

“I… yes.”

“Would you show me?”

He looks hopeful, and Felicity doesn’t know how to say no. She doesn’t think she _wants_ to, and she realizes that she can finally open a side of herself up to Oliver in a way she hadn’t before.

She pulls over another chair and sits next to Oliver.

* * *

From there, things kind of spiral out of Felicity’s control.  

Oliver loves looking through her plans – and he’s surprised at how far they went. There were the business proposals, website designs, logos, potential prototypes, list of investors (one Queen Consolidated was on there in the _unlikely_ column of her spreadsheet), and real estate.

The office space listings are what push Oliver to plan a weekend trip to Starling City – even when she argues that most of these places aren’t on the market anymore and some might not even exist.

Honestly, he surprises her with how enthusiastic he is. At first, she was worried her plans would scare him away, or that he would brush them off as too ambitious, but every day he encourages her to find ways to make her dreams come true.

Every day he reminds Felicity why she fell in love with Oliver Queen.

Their first trip to Starling City – for company purposes – involves them being photographed while walking through a park.

Felicity doesn’t expect it, and it makes Oliver angry.

“I’m not relevant anymore,” he fumes when they sit down for lunch at a little restaurant, “Why should they worry about what I’m doing, or who I’m seeing? Who’s buying those pictures, anyway?”

Evidently, no one does, because the paparazzi incident happens just the one time. Felicity is glad, she has a really ugly sneeze face she doesn’t think anyone should capture for eternity. That’s not something she could see herself getting used to.

The trip to Starling, otherwise, goes well.

When he’s not showing her empty office spaces up for lease with a hopeful expression, Oliver shows her parts of the city he used to go to when his family still lived there. He even passes by the old Queen Consolidated building – now renamed to better fit the new owner.

Felicity likes this side of Oliver – he’s carefree as he walks with her in a park that’s far bigger than the one back home, or when takes her out for drinks at his favourite bar.

“So,” he asks hopefully, resting on the edge of their hotel bed, “How do you like my hometown?”

Felicity fights the urge to remind him that she’d been here before, because he really does look like he’d spent the weekend trying to sell her on a little part of him.

“It’s a great city, Oliver,” she says.

“A great city that you could see yourself living in?” he pushes, eyebrows turning upwards and head tilting in the most unfairly adorable way.

She closes her eyes, sighing.

“Oliver…”

“I’m not saying we need to move here tomorrow,” he reasons, “Just, think about it? I know you’d love it here.”

“Okay,” she pulls herself up on the bed, crossing her legs underneath her and gesturing for Oliver to do the same. “Let’s say I thought about it, and I rented that place we looked at in the North side, and I got everything together and _somehow_ decided to start a company and move here. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Oliver…”

“I would…” Oliver shakes his head, “Anything. I’ve been thinking about a few things. I might go back to school – I was barely in it the first time, my dad handled everything for me. Or I could work in food, which, thanks to you, I learned that I loved. If I get my MBA I could use that to open a restaurant. I was thinking something near the water – become a total tourist trap that everyone would hate.”

He says it so easily, the grin creasing the dimple in his cheek.

“You really have thought about this,” she says, fingers twisting together.

“I really have,” Oliver assures, “Because I just want you to do the best you can do.”

“You said Star Creek grew on you,” she says, referring to a conversation from a few months ago, “I wouldn’t be pulling you away?”

“It was less about the town,” Oliver says, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, “And more about the company I made.”

Felicity’s running out of reasons to say no.

She purses her lips together.

“Okay,” she says, closing her eyes with a wince. _This is crazy._

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, let’s do this.”

The smile Oliver gives her could power all of Star Creek.

* * *

There’s a lot more weekend trips to Staring City before things really get started.

And there’s meetings – so many meetings.

Courtesy of Oliver, who asked Walter for a favour. And though Walter’s in finance now, he has contacts in the tech field and gets Felicity to meet with another young CEO named Ray Palmer – who loves her vision and is enthusiastic.

After that, Felicity just can’t keep up. She’s signing a lease for a small office in a busy part of the city, she’s apartment hunting with Oliver, and returning to Star Creek to pack up the life she’s known for the past twenty-some years.

Letting go of the shop is the hardest part of it all. It wasn’t what she wanted, but she learned so much about herself in these walls, and every minute here was a reminder of her parents.

A retired couple in town agree to take over. It’s easier than selling, the name gets to stay as is and she can always come back and visit.

She gives the store one last look, as Oliver’s loading the last of their items in Tiny outside.

Her computer sits on the counter. She hasn’t packed it up, because she has a new shiny one waiting for her in Starling City. Still, that old, loud computer is what she filled out her MIT applications on. Granted, she’s opened it up and made a handful of improvements since then, but the nostalgia is still there.

She wanders over to Oliver’s station, eyeing the pastries and wondering if anyone will fault her for taking a muffin for the road.

The bell rings behind her.

She turns to see Oliver walking through the door, wiping sweat before replacing his black baseball Rockets cap on his head.

“Hey,” she says, “All done? We should be heading out soon.”

They plan on getting settled in Starling City tonight. It’s also their first anniversary, so they wanted to leave early to eat dinner somewhere Oliver made reservations at.

“Yeah,” he says breathlessly, his eyes darting around the empty store.

“Everything alright?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says, walking to the computer Felicity was staring at earlier, “I just… Really want to check the traffic before we hit the road.”

Felicity tilts her head.

“That’s why we have phones,” she says slowly, holding hers up.

Oliver gives a sort of nervous chuckle.

“It’ll just take a minute.”

“Alright, weirdo,” she says, deciding to follow her initial impulse and reaches for a muffin in the case.

After a few minutes of tapping, Oliver groans.

“Can you come here for a sec?” he says nervously, “Something’s gone wrong.”

Felicity chuckles at his concerned expression. They’ve had enough computer incidents for Oliver to know that she hates when he messes with things and, potentially, breaks them.

“Really, Oliver,” she says lightly, “You just had to go and break the computer on our last day here?”

Oliver doesn’t say anything as she walks over, but moves back so that she can look at the computer screen. She’s only vaguely aware of him standing behind her as she diagnoses the problem.

When she looks, everything seems fine. The screen is blank, except for one document with four simple words written in black.

_Will you marry me?_

Felicity feels like all the blood gets knocked out of her head and falls straight to her feet. Head feeling dangerously spinny, she turns around to look at Oliver.

The sight of him perched on one knee, a small ring pinched between his fingers, instantly brings tears to Felicity’s eyes.

“What – ?”

Oliver looks down for a moment, swallowing hard before meeting her eyes, his own just as wet as hers.

“Now?” she asks in a small voice.

Oliver gives her a smile.

“I know we’re about to start a next part of our lives together,” he says, his voice uncharacteristically trembling, “And I can’t wait for it. But this is the place I fell in love with you. So, this is where I want to ask, will you marry me?”

She sinks to her knees to join him on the floor, nodding frantically because the words get lost in her throat.

Oliver’s smile splits his face, the air only briefly getting knocked out of him when she throws her arms around his neck.

The ring catches in the light the entire ride to Starling City, where Felicity’s hand rests on the centre console, intertwined with Oliver’s.

As they pass the Star Creek’s city limits sign, she feels nothing but hope and excitement at the promise of their future together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading
> 
> twitter - smoakoverwatch  
> tumblr - overwatchandarrow


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